If you want to counter someone’s argument, you have to provide evidence that is at least as strong as the evidence presented with an argument. Just waving your hands and claiming that the “system” makes anything a person happens to disagree with a lie or mistake is nearly everything wrong with pretty much any public discourse on any topic.
When did being an expert become a bad thing?
This is a big problem though. The Big Collective makes all the rules. They get to say what is what. The scholar is approved by them and is one of them. The scholar does what they are told...and if they don't walk the line exactly, well it will be edited by "them" anyway.
Someone goes and finds what "they" say is "evidence" of whatever "they" want to say....then say it's "100% fact". Then they says they will only accept an argument that only uses what "they" say is "ok evidence" . So when you find anything they don't like "oh, it just does not count".
There is nothing wrong with an expert, though that is often not a "scholar" type. The "scholar" is just paid to promote one side of a point of view with what they say are "facts".
How would you define a fact?
Easy enough: a bit of data that is an absolute truth.
For example your birthday is a fact: you were born in a set place at a set time. A book was published on a set date or a company when out of business on a set date.
But too many people add all sorts of details to facts, that make them untrue.....unless you accept the One Way View.
For example: lets take sales.
Book X comes out and is sold. They keep track of how many are sold. Then you will get this:
"Book X is popular because it sold x amount of copies". See what they did there..."they" added popular. To "them" and the One Way View, sales numbers equal popularity.
Well....except they DON"T and that is not true and not a fact. Sales numbers ONLY tell you how many copies were sold. It's a PURE and UTTER fabrication to AUTOMATICALLY say that EVERY single copy sold was ONLY bought by someone who thought the book was "popular".
This alone ignores things like:
Well....a good chunk of folks, say 20% or so, are Pure New Stuff Zombies. As soon as a "new book" comes out, they will automatically buy it(or pre order it). But this has NOTHING to do with "popularity": these people MUST buy the new thing......because it's new.
Another chunk of people buy the new book out of peer presure....they don't want to be left out. But, again, they are not buying it because it's popular.
And another group will hate buy....buy it to read it and be able to talk about it. But, again, this is not because it's popular.
And, a very big one is.....well, this does NOT account for real popularity. There are often a huge number of people that like and WANT to buy the book....but they can't. They simply Can Not afford it. And this is a lot of people. BUT "they" UTTERLY DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM as they are not good consumers buying things. It's ONLY popular to "them" if you give "them" your money. But see THEY don't measure popularity by counting the number of people that walk by the book....give it a glance...and keep walking as they can't afford it. Because THEY set the rules.
Stretching "popular" to mean "whatever they want it to mean toady" does not help anyone.
